


a rock and roll feeling

by gilligankane



Series: you can tell everybody this is your song [40]
Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: 80's Music, F/F, Mixtape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-11 12:56:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20153959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gilligankane/pseuds/gilligankane
Summary: Nicole watches as Gus dips the knife into the jar of peanut butter. “But how do I know how much peanut butter I should use?”“Don’t know ‘til you know,” Gus says.





	a rock and roll feeling

**Author's Note:**

> Written for twitter user wonderlust71 as a thank you.
> 
> Set in Fall 1984

**“Rock & Roll Feeling” Styx, 1974  
** _ I get a buzz when I think about ya, riding high's where I belong. Gonna get my things together, so if you want, come on along. It's a good feeling; It's a rock and roll feeling. _

Nicole watches as Gus dips the knife into the jar of peanut butter. “But how do I know how much peanut butter I should use?"

“Don’t know ‘til you know,” Gus says. She smears the peanut butter against a piece of white bread. She studies it for a moment. “Not enough. So I add more.”

Nicole frowns, leaning closer. She rests her chin on the backs of her hands, ignoring the slight pinch. She sits up quickly when she realizes the pinch isn’t coming from her hands, but from the top of her arms where her white t-shirt is stretching against the skin. She smooths a hand down over her front, eyes following the front of her jeans to the cuffed bottoms. She wiggles her socked toes, glad she took the Red Wing boots she borrowed from Nathan’s closet off and left them by the door. She might get peanut butter on them. 

“But how much more?” she asks.

Gus snorts, spreading a second helping of peanut butter over the first. “You want precise measurements?”

“Like, how many songs it is?” Nicole pulls her bottom lip in, chewing with her two front teeth. “Is it one Billy Joel song or one Styx song?”

“I have no idea in hell what you’re talking about, girl.”

The screen door bangs shut, and Nicole sits up, spinning around in her chair until the back is against her front. Waverly slips around Curtis, ducking under his arm and skipping into the kitchen. “Look,” she shouts, holding up a pink slip. “I made my first purchase.”

Curtis slows her down with a hand on her shoulder. “Sure did. Everything but sign for it.”

Waverly pouts. “I tried to.”

Nicole plucks the slip out of her hand. She’s seen these before.  _ Pink slips _ , Doc called them.  _ You race for them, and if you win them, you get someone’s car. _ He’d said Wyatt Aper had just about a hundred of them, but Nicole didn’t believe it. Wyatt was always being driven around by some other Blue Devil. She bets he doesn’t even have a car. And definitely not a hundred of them. Only, she’d never tell Doc that. Wyatt is his hero.

“Did you buy a car?”

Curtis laughs, and the sound swells in Nicole’s chest. He’s only been gone a few days, but she missed him being around. Gus smiled a little less. Wynonna was a total grouch. Songs didn’t sound the same when he wasn’t there. 

“Close enough. She bought this month’s meat supply,” he says proudly. He squeezes Waverly’s shoulder gently. “Negotiated a better price. That Todd boy and his wife was trying to pull one over on us, charging double. Waverly noticed, though, didn’t you?”

Waverly smiles widely. “I did what Wynonna taught me.” She puts her hands on her hips and pulls her forehead down until it wrinkles, looking up at Nicole with narrowed eyes. “I said, ‘ _ Don’t be a barf bag, Susan _ ,’ and I-”

Nicole’s eyes widen.

“You what?” Gus asks, her knife hovering mid-air. Nicole looks at the specks of peanut butter that dot the cabinet and winces. “Wynonna taught you  _ what _ ?”

“I didn’t do it!” Wynonna calls from the stairs. She stomps down them, her Dyna Kids hiking boots heavy on her feet. “What did I do?” she asks, leaning against the kitchen doorway. She’s in an old shirt that Nicole thinks might be Nathan’s, a Styx tour shirt with Equinox on the front. It’s shoved into the front of her too-big jean shorts, the ones she stole from Curtis and cut the legs off of. 

Gus turns, pointing the knife in Wynonna’s direction. “Did you teach this girl to say ‘barf bag’ to people?”

Wynonna shrugs a shoulder carelessly. “Nicole did.”

Nicole’s mouth drops open, stabbing a finger in Wynonna’s direction to shout, but Gus doesn’t even look back at her.

“What have I told you about teaching that girl all of those things you say?”

Wynonna sighs heavily. “Not to do it,” she says, her voice flat. 

Gus opens her mouth, but Curtis cuts in, stepping in front of Gus and covering his hand with her own. “How about we make these girls some lunch.” He looks over his shoulder and winks at Nicole before he nods his head towards the cabinet where the plates are. “Nicole, can you get something to eat off of? Waverly, start that coffee pot for me. I’m about six cups behind where I should be.” He grins at Gus. “And Wynonna? Take those boots off and sit down at the table with the rest of us, will you? Try and pretend to be a bit civilized.”

Wynonna huffs, some of her hair fluttering away from her forehead. “But me and Nicole-”

“Nicole and I,” Waverly corrects.

Wynonna glares hard in Waverly’s direction. “ _ Me and Nicole _ ,” she repeats, “are headed down to our secret hideout.”

“It’s not a secret if you keep telling everyone about it,” Nicole grumbles. She nods at Curtis, though. “Gus was making us fluffernutters.”

Wynonna wrinkles her nose. “I don’t want one of those. I want roast beef.”

Gus sighs. “Do I look like I run a restaurant?” she mutters.

Wynonna stares at her. “But you do.”

Gus’s eyes narrow into thin slits, and Nicole kicks at the back of Wynonna’s leg, jerking her head towards the table.  _ Sit down _ , she tries to tell her.

Curtis sighs loudly, throwing his hands up even though he’s smiling. He catches Nicole’s eye and winks again. “Fine, fine. We’ll eat out of our hands like cavemen if we must.” He pulls the slice of bread and the peanut butter knife out of Gus’s hand and tosses it into the sink, not even wincing at the clanging sound it makes. 

It echoes loudly in Nicole’s ears, and by the time they stop ringing, Curtis and Gus are gone, and the front porch door is swinging shut behind them. The bread Gus was using for her fluffernutter is soggy, soaking up the last of the coffee dumped into the sink earlier. She can hear Wynonna’s heavy boots on the stairs, stomping along the hallway before she slams her door shut. A Styx tape starts up and drifts down the stairs.

Nicole sighs. “She wasn’t done making my fluffernutter,” she says to herself. She drops her chin into her hands, pushing out her lower lip as she looks up at Waverly. “I don’t want roast beef.”

Waverly presses her lips into a thin line and opens the refrigerator door, peering into it. “There’s bologna?” Nicole makes a face, and Waverly shakes her head sharply. “No, okay. No bologna.” 

Nicole sighs again. “It’s fine. I guess.”

Waverly closes the refrigerator door, the magnets on the front rattling softly. Nicole watches the way her shoulders pull back, and her spine straightens up, and when she starts across the kitchen floor, her feet sound like the opening notes to Nicole’s new favorite Van Halen song.

_ And then you sense a change… _

She watches Waverly twist around a kitchen chair, her hair catching the light coming through the window over the sink. There’s a flash of blue and silver around her hands as she stretches up onto her toes, reaching into the cabinet.

_ Nothing feels the same… _

“Nicole,” Waverly says sharply.

Nicole jerks, her eyes snapping up to meet Waverly’s. “What?”

Waverly holds up the jar Gus left behind and another she pulled from the shelves. “I said, do you want crunchy or smooth?”

“Smooth,” Nicole says, swallowing hard against her dry throat. “What’re you-” She takes another breath in. “What’re you doing?”

Waverly looks at Nicole over her shoulder, one hand pulling a new knife out of the utensil drawer. “Making you a fluffernutter,” she says slowly.

Nicole stands up quickly, shaking her head. “No. No,  _ you _ can’t. Only Gus can.”

Waverly huffs, blowing some hair off her face. “Gus can’t make your fluffernutters forever,” she points out.

“Uh, yes. She can.” Nicole folds her arms over her chest decisively.

“What about when she goes with Curtis on an inventory trip?”

Nicole shrugs. “You go with him, not Gus.”

Waverly purses her lips. “What about when she’s sick.”

“She can make them ahead of time.” Nicole reminds herself to tell Gus to start making them a day ahead of schedule so that she never has that problem.

Waverly sighs loudly. “What about when you’re too old to have someone make your lunch for you?”

“I won’t ever be too old for that.” Nicole sits back down, sure she's beaten down everything Waverly can throw at her. “No one knows how to make it like Gus does.”

Waverly pauses, chewing on her bottom lip. “ _ I _ can.”

Nicole snorts. “No, you can’t. Even I don’t know how she makes them.” Her forehead wrinkles in frustration. “I try to watch her, but I never get to watch the whole thing.” 

She can hear more of Wynonna’s music now.  _ Styx _ , a voice in her head tells her. It sounds like Curtis’s voice. It’s Styx’s “Man of Miracles,” and she’s skipping around the cassette again. She remembers Mattie putting it into Wynonna’s hands and telling her to give it a chance; that there are a few gems there and you just need to wade through it to find the ones you love.

There’s the hiss of a cassette being rewound, and then the start “Rock & Roll Feeling” filters down the stairs and into Nicole’s ears.

_ I get a buzz when I think about ya. Riding high's where I belong. Gonna get my things together, so if you want, come on along. It's a good feeling; It's a rock and roll feeling. It's a good feeling. _

Nicole looks up as Waverly puts down the jar of smooth peanut butter and dips the knife in. “I’ve watched her, though,” Waverly says. 

Nicole opens her mouth, but Waverly holds up a knife full of peanut butter and waves it at Nicole. “Just wait.”

“Okay,” Nicole says quietly, listening as Styx keeps playing above her.

_It's a good feeling. It's a rock and roll feeling. It's a good feeling. It's a rock and roll feeling. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,_ _yeah, yeah_

The guitar solo floods in as Nicole watches Waverly work. She wants to ask how Waverly knows how much peanut butter to use, but she stays silent as the knife dips in and out and in and out again. She drops that knife in the sink and gets a new one before she twists the lid off the fluff jar. Nicole’s eyes follow the way she smears the fluff across the bread; the way she carefully stacks the bread together, making sure all the corners line up; the way she places the sandwich on the plate and drops it down in front of Nicole.

“One fluffernutter,” Waverly says, grinning.

Nicole lifts the plate, turning it around and inspecting it critically. She hums and lifts one corner of the top layer, the gooey peanut butter and fluff pulling to stay together. She looks up at Waverly, licking her lips. “Passes inspection.”

Waverly rolls her eyes, giving Nicole a mock salute. “Whatever, you roller.”

“But,” Nicole says quickly. “It depends on how it tastes.”

The first bite tastes like Gus’s fluffernutters taste. There’s just enough peanut butter and the right amount of fluff, and it’s  _ perfect _ .

“Why?” Nicole asks around a mouthful of fluff and peanut butter.

Waverly puts the last slice of bologna on her sandwich. “Why what?”

Nicole swallows, washing down the peanut butter in her throat with a long sip of water. “Why do you watch Gus make fluffernutters? You don’t even like them.” She takes another big bite. “You told me you’d rather share a milkshake with Tucker Gardner than eat a fluffernutter.  _ Ever _ .”

Waverly scoffs and looks down, picking a piece of crust off her sandwich and leaving it on the side of her plate. “He makes me want to barf.”

“So do fluffernutters,” Nicole reminds her. She drains the rest of her water glass and puts it back on the table with a dull thud. “So why do you know how she makes it if you don’t even like to eat it?”

“Well,” Waverly says slowly. “You do.”

Peanut butter sticks to the roof of her mouth. “What?”

Waverly lifts her chin into the air. “I said that you like fluffernutters.”

Nicole nods slowly. “I do,” she agrees.

“So.” Waverly shrugs. “What happens when Gus doesn’t make them for you anymore?”

Nicole’s throat tightens, but she’s not sure why. “I don’t know,” she admits.

Waverly smiles brightly. “I’ll make them, you noob.”

“Noob?”

Waverly flicks a piece of crust at Nicole’s forehead. “Yeah,” she says quietly. “I will.”

Nicole’s stomach flutters and the fluff settles low in her belly. “Okay,” she manages. 

There’s peanut butter stuck to her teeth, and her tongue feels stuck in her throat. She can hear Wynonna stomping around upstairs and Styx drifting through the halls. Gus and Curtis are laughing on the front porch. Waverly has a smear of fluff across her cheek.

“Okay,” Nicole repeats. “You will.”


End file.
